Sec. Clinton does not think the rich pay enough taxes
Yup, the rich do not pay enough taxes. Well Secretary of State Clinton, since you think that way, may I suggest you and your husband cut a check and pay extra local, state and federal taxes immediately. There is nothing stopping you from paying more, but you won’t do it … and you know it.
Read this entire post and send it to your friends please! The links and data at the bottom of the post are very important. Don’t let Hillary Clinton or any other liberal re-write history.
I’m sick of people saying the rich don’t pay their fair share. We’ve debunked that argument so many times it’s ridiculous. The rich – however defined – certainly do pay their fair share of taxes and much more.
I’m have a full time “day” job and in the evenings and weekends I dabble a little with website implementation and management for small businesses. I’m not rich by any standard the Obama administration elects to use this week. For every dollar I make (after expenses) in that side business – and it’s not much – 45 cents go toward taxes. That’s right, 25 percent goes towards federal income taxes, 15 percent goes towards self-employment taxes and another 5 percent goes to the state.
At what point is a taxation level considered immoral? What is my incentive to grow my own small business where maybe I could quit my day job and hire a few people to work for me? Was this not America’s promise? Freedom, personal responsibility, growth, success, hard work and prosperity?
People like Sec. Clinton and President Barack Obama are now daily crushing the will of Americans looking to prosper and achieve. From Ben Smith at Politico. (There is a sponsor message prior to the Hillary clip.)
“The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the kind of employment issues [America currently does] — whether it’s individual, corporate or whatever [form of] taxation forms,” [Sec. of State Hillary] Clinton told an audience at the Brookings Institution, where she was discussing the Administration’s new National Security Strategy.
Clinton said the comment was her personal opinion alone. “I’m not speaking for the administration, so I’ll preface that with a very clear caveat,” she said.
She has the guts to reference Brazil where the rich are getting richer and “they’re pulling people out of poverty.” Has she taken a look at the slums of Rio lately? Did they not shoot a police helicopter out of the sky last year?
And by the way, America is not Brazil … no offense to Brazil.
Tax Cuts Work!
The United States has proven that tax reductions actually bring wide-spread growth to all. I’ve had multiple posts on the subject, but one of my favorites is one from November 2008, republished in February 2009 since I worked so damn hard on it.
Equally important was my post from November 2008 that detailed how every income demographic improved their position after the Bush tax cuts. It’s simple, Bush cut taxes for all Americans who paid taxes and the rich got richer and families were pulled from the lower class into the middle class. Don’t be a Clinton sponge, go look at the actual data.
Now, look again at Clinton’s quote and what she says in the video and ask yourself … is she just spewing this crap assuming everyone will listen or does she have any data – like I have provided – that proves raising taxes and spending more of our own personal wealth through government will improve the status of the lower and middle class?
Socialism is around the corner. We must fight this “it feels right” economic attitude and teach and mentor how economics actually works or we’re doomed.
12 Comments
The website's content and articles were migrated to a new framework in October 2023. You may see [shortcodes in brackets] that do not make any sense. Please ignore that stuff. We may fix it at some point, but we do not have the time now.
You'll also note comments migrated over may have misplaced question marks and missing spaces. All comments were migrated, but trackbacks may not show.
The site is not broken.
By the looks of things, IMHO, the Secretary of State Hilary does look like she is getting warmed up to look at a possible Presidential run for 2012 with her statement about the rich not paying enough taxes. Enough already!
Is it just me, or is Hillary looking a bit ragged as of late? Kinda like that picture someone took on her first day in the senate.
Run a comb through that mop, Hill!
Dims, She looks like hell and is obviously not investing any money in collagen or facelifts, but she's definitely hit the jewelry stores! Coupl'a nice pieces she's got on there!
I can see a couple of reasons why Hill-Dog might be saying this. One, exclaiming "the rich are not paying their fair share" is just another way of saying that she hopes the rich to pay out until the poor and rich are equal, as your "socialism is just around the corner" comment points out. Two, now that this administration has put us over 12 TRILLION dollars in debt (I can't believe we even get to use the number trillion in real life!), she's panicked as to how they will get the money and wants to garner support against "the rich". On the other hand, she could just have a snuke in her snizz (a-thank you South Park).
I never did get the "it's not okay to take what's not been given, unless the government is taking it" bit as being morally justified. When is taxation moral, and at what point does taxation become immoral?
This was a really interesting post, Steve. It really made me think at some of the deeper issues we have to face as a society.
The lefties have totally bastardized the word "fair", pure and simple. "Fair" to them simply means that "you can afford to pay for me". Real fairness would be a flat tax.
Every time money changes hands, the government gets its cut. Unless it is the black market, of course, then the honest gangsters get their cut.
Sorry Steve, your chart is a nice theory but where are the hardline facts detailing those moves upward into the middle bracket is why we stayed flat. Frankly I think the reason is because salaries have remained flat due to outsourcing jobs and dumbing down of salaries. Factories leaving the US for China, Mexico and India taking with them good careers and decent wages leaving a lot of people transferring to the service sector or unemployment. I've worked in IT for over 25 years and have never seen it so decimated job wise. I used to get hammered with calls from headhunters – now even alot of the headhunters are gone. This also happening in engineering and soon in many other sectors. I'd love to believe its all good if we just cut taxes but my gut tells me the only job growth is going to be somewhere else and taxes aren't the only reason.
I wish someone would come out and say it – that CT businesses WILL hire locals, pay them a decent wage, and not send the work to China, India, and Mexico (or anywhere else) if we force the government to lower taxes and ease some regulations. But history and instinct tells me this isn't going to happen. What say you?
My chart is not theory. I display hard facts directly from information on IRS returns and you call my post theory? Talking about putting your head in the sand. Why not put hard data together to prove my facts incorrect?
Concerning outsourcing of positions overseas, you best get used to it. The economy is global now, and it's getting easier to do all sorts of things. Some say it started with robots welding at auto plants. Should the companies have refused to move forward with better more productive technology to keep humans welding car frames? How about buggy whips? They certainly had a bunch of people making buggy whips in the early 1800s, but over time they all lost their gig.
Maybe we should restrict our Internet traffic to within our own border so we would only be able to find IT developers in country at $100 per hour, when there is a guy in Kiev that would do the same coding job, with the same quality for $75 per hour?
By the way, why is it OK to outsource jobs in Connecticut to North Carolina? That's a big part of what's going on and it is comparable to outsourcing jobs to other countries. Do the people in Connecticut feel scorned? Should we somehow stop businesses from doing that too?
Heck, I just posted an article about StarKist and Chicken of the Sea outsourcing jobs from American Samoa to the United States because Congress got involved, messed with wage rates, and screwed the Samoans.
All of that said, even if we do lower taxes, that is no guaranty jobs would not be outsourced. I never said it would. Market forces would still be in play, and big companies look at small percentages. If they can save 3 percent by outsourcing, but the government steps in and lowers taxes or offers incentives equaling or exceeding the savings they would have by outsourcing, guess what? They stay. It happens all the time now, with even local towns offering property tax breaks for a decade or more for a company to build an office or plant in their town, city or state.
The problem is those tax breaks are targeted to individual companies who have a lot of employees (thousands), but if I had a business with 50 employees and asked for an incentive to stay in Connecticut as compared to moving to Texas, I'd be laughed out of the room. And that's a big problem.
The theory part is the data which shows that lower income jobs have moved upwards – all you show is flat middle class income and explain that with the lower income jobs moving up – but that is theory a conjecture if you will. My conjecture and many others say it is not – it is simply that middle class salaries have stagnated. Where does the IRS show that percentages of people who were making x amount of dollars per year are now making more?
Re: Outsourcing get used to it. OK I'm used to it and I'm used to ABortion and alot of other things that are just plain wrong. That is not a rebuttal. Why is it we find it necessary to send work to other countries instead of in our own neighborhoods? Global economy is newspeak for greed. And I"m NOT a liberal. Whats right is right. You want me to buy your stuff then maybe you should consider hiring me. The "Market" isn't God. Nor is it America. I think there is disconnect between conservatives and that. My dad and many others didn't serve their country and in some cases die so some guy could make millions sending jobs to China.
I agree with Anne-EH Sounds like Hillary is running for a 2012 spot.
She is running from Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea and Isreal. Like the rest of the top brass has for years – caused trouble and left Scott Bates to clean it up.
Ms. Clinton – Respect others sovereignty and you will be respected. If you can't do your assigned job, don't poke your nose into someone else's job. Otherwise you just add credence to the addage "Screw up and move up."
Ms. Clinton can't handle her own job without sticking her nose into this too.
Anne-EH is right on target. Hillary could probably care less about Foreign Affairs. Its just another line item on her resume for a presidential run. I think she is also counting on the Dilbert " Screw up, move up" theory of management advancement.
Mr. McGough,
I do not dispute your graphs from the IRS whatsoever. They are a snapshot in time using relevant data from federal tax returns. To show a balanced approach, please post graph’s from a reputable source showing how much the federal deficit changed during the same time period. I would also like you to comment on this article:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/morningeconomist/archiv…
Thank you.
No. Your "article" is a blog post, just like mine and I'm not here to deconstruct blog posts or defend Bush on everything. Bush made serious mistakes along the way, including continuing to allow spending to grow out of control. But as a reminder, Congress has the purse strings and they continued to spend. I'm bucking the entire system here, not just liberals.
My post here displays how the individual and corporate revenue shot up 35 percent between 2003 and 2007. Gee, what happened between 2001 and 2003 to get that spurt to happen? The serious problem during these years was spending. The huge spike in revenue was welcomed by Congress with open arms as they wrote check, after check, after check. Also check out how the tax burden shifted from individuals to business during those years. Interesting heh? You won't hear from the media or Democrats on how Bush policies reduced the tax burden on all families and moved it to the mean corporations will ya?
There are many ways to measure the deficit (not debt) for the United States. I prefer to do it as a percentage of GDP, or a percentage of revenue (taxes) coming into the federal treasury. As an example, if you make $1 million a year, you may be able to afford a $3 million (or more) home, but you can only afford $300k in house if you make $100k … just tossing numbers out for comparison.
That said, the deficit as a percentage of GDP went from a high of 3.5 percent in 2004, down to 1.41 percent in 2007. It got way worse in 2008 – back up to 3.5 percent – and has now grown to OMFG status at 10.6+ percent.
As for the deficit dollar amount, we're all familiar with this chart containing CBO numbers. It shows the deficit going down in 2005, 2006 and 2007 after a high of a bit more than $400 billion in 2004. Of course, the left and media certainly freaked out at that number … yet seem unconcerned about the tripling of the deficit between 2008 and 2009.